New Order Swap Peter Hook for Blur's Alex James for New Band Bad Lieutenant

Well, it's official now: New Order are broken up. The BBC reports that the non-Peter Hook members of the group have a new group with a new name: Bad Lieutenant. And they've also got themselves a new bassist. (via NME)

Bad Lieutenant consists of founding New Order members (and, along with Hook, former Joy Division members) Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, along with relatively recent New Order addition Phil Cunningham. The ringer in for Hook? Blur bassist Alex James. According to the BBC, Bad Lieutenant has recorded an album, and it's due in October. They'll also tour later in the year, presumably after James gets done playing this summer's run of Blur reunion shows.

Talking to the BBC about the new album, Sumner had this to say: "I'm very proud of it; it's a very good album. It's pretty guitary, too, because we've got three guitarists in the band."

In March, Sumner played an acoustic version of a new Bad Lieutenant song, "Sink or Swim", on the cable channel Sky Arts 1. It totally sounds like a New Order song except for all the acoustic guitars. Hook, whose acrimonious relationship with his old band would probably make him their toughest critic, had nice things to say about the song in a recent, since-deleted MySpace blog post: "I actually really liked the track bernard did on that Sky show, credit where its due."

According to the BBC, Sumner doesn't exactly return the warm sentiments. Speaking about New Order's breakup, he said this: "We split into two factions. There's me Steve and Phil. The other is Peter Hook. Basically he left the band. That's all I want to say about it."

Hook was the man behind some of the most iconic basslines in postpunk history. With Bad Lieutenant, Alex James runs the risk of becoming synthpop's Sammy Hagar. We'll see how it turns out in October.